Science Feature 24-04-2017
March for Science
Global event, over 600 cities around the world across 6
continents, marched with the original march that took place in Washington DC.
In the UK, marches were held in Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, London, Manchester
and Norwich.
The marchers were scientists and non-scientists alike,
marched for "robustly funded and publicly communicated
science as a pillar of human freedom and prosperity. We unite as a
diverse, nonpartisan group to call for science that upholds the common good and
for political leaders and policy makers to enact evidence based policies in the
public interest".
For the scientists there we were encouraged to go out and tell people
that we attended the march, our experience of it and why we did it and show
that we are a diverse group, that we are not all old white men with crazy hair.
Many were holding placards suggesting they should be writing
papers or their theses and I saw a tweet that said that it was a struggle to
get three co-authors together in a room, so to see thousands of scientists
around the world come out and march must mean it is important.
People who were there or are listening now that wouldn’t
consider themselves as professional scientists, know that the support and
interest that you show for science is extremely important to professional
scientists. Please continue to follow science news and take the time to check
sources of articles – where was the study conducted and by whom, how many
repeats or participants were there in the study, has it been repeated by other
institutions elsewhere to verify the results? By conducting this next level of
research, we can help avoid sensationalist headlines and so forth from gaining
traction.
Check out the events of the day and what you can do to
continue to support by going to the website or searching the hashtags #marchforscience #sciencemarch
Cassini-Huygens mission
The spacecraft has been studying Saturn for 13 years,
following a seven year journey to the planet (launched 1997), when its nominal
mission was four years.
The craft has begun its final orbits of Saturn. It is being
manoeuvred into a final dive into the atmosphere of Saturn, as the Galileo
spacecraft was at Jupiter because it is too much of planetary protection issue
to leave an unresponsive, fuel-depleted craft to wander the Saturnian system
unchecked because of the very real possibility of life on the moons.
It will plunge into the atmosphere on 15 September this
year, but before this it will complete several orbits where it passes through
the ring system to discover more about them. It will first pass through the
rings on Wednesday (26 April) at 9 am. The data it collects will help estimate
the mass of the rings, in turn telling us about their approximate age.
Discoveries made by the Cassini probe include:
- The first probe to land on the surface of an outer solar system body, Huygens landed on Titan in 2005, during decent saw rivers and lakes of hydrocarbons. Later it was discovered that it rains methane there.
- Found plumes of material spouting from Enceladus along the surface “Tiger Stripes”, recently found to have a sub-surface ocean and evidence of hydrothermal vents. Also, evidence of organic particles, which could be precursors to life, were detected in the plume.
- A greater understanding of Saturn’s cloud system by observing storms. The largest temperature increase was seen and molecules previously never detected were seen.
Previous to the Cassini-Huygens mission, only brief
encounters with the planet had occurred, by way of fly-bys by Pioneer 11,
Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Everything we know about the planet, its moons and
rings comes from this amazing mission.
There is so much more information and discoveries than I
could possibly cover in a 5 minute piece so please visit: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov for more
details and to follow the final months of the mission.
Scientist of the
Month
Peggy Whitson
Has set a new record for the longest U.S. Astronaut in
space, 534 days, 2 hours and 49 mins, cumulative. She is on the space station
for the next 5 months, so she will be adding to this to a total of 650 days!
She has a while to go before she breaks the record for longest ever cumulative
time spent in space, which is 879 days.
She is a biochemist, was the first woman to command the ISS
and first to command it twice. She is also the female with the most spacewalks.
She was a project scientist on the Shuttle-Mir program. You can send her a
message celebrating her record with the hashtag #CongratsPeggy.
Night Sky This Month
For early risers, Mercury is at greatest elongation on 17
May, look for the planet in the Eastern sky just before sunrise at 5:05 am.
Venus is the morning star at the moment. Jupiter is
available for viewing from sunset into the early morning with Saturn rising
around midnight.
10 May is the full Moon.
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